The Gunners are officially heading down under, as Arsenal officially confirm they will travel to Melbourne at the end of the Barclays Women’s Super League season.

Arsenal will face an all star A-League Women’s side at the Marvel Stadium in Melbourne, on May 24th. With a chance to showcase Arsenal on Australian soil, they return to the home of the 2023 Women’s World Cup to be part of one of the three matches in what has been labelled ‘Global Football Weekend’. 

The Australian Women’s National team won the hearts of viewers across the nation, as the Matildas have consistently sold-out their last 13 games on home soil. Three players who regularly feature in these squads are Arsenal’s Steph Catley, Caitlin Foord and Kyra Cooney-Cross, who will all travel to face the all star A-League team in Melbourne.

Arsenal Manager, Jonas Eidevall addressed the media on Friday morning ahead of their Barclays Women’s Super League clash with Aston Villa. 

The Gunners boss addressed their end of season journey to Australia, highlighting the important role that the club plays in growing the women’s game. “Let’s acknowledge the great thing that we’re at the point where it’s very commercially viable for us to do a post-season trip like this. That shows the club’s investment but also the popularity that the team has not only in the UK but across the globe.”

Australia were co-hosts of the Women’s World Cup in summer 2023, as almost two million fans piled through the turnstiles to witness fixtures across the tournament. Eidevall reflected on the tournament, and the exponential growth that women’s football has had across the nation of Australia.

“I think when you see Australia as a football continent and I was there and lucky enough to experience the World Cup last summer and you can see what enthusiasm, what interest women’s football had in Australia and it’s great that that can continue to build, and this is another opportunity to do that. Both for women’s football in general but Arsenal as a specific club.”

The match comes just one week after the conclusion of the WSL, as an international period looms closely behind Arsenal’s trip down under. Eidevall expressed the opportunity that this trip may create for his Gunners, whilst also digesting the importance of load management for the athletes.

“Once the decision was taken that we were going, now of course it’s about making the most and the best out of that opportunity and that means that for some players it will be the right thing to go and for some players it will not be the right thing to go.

Like we talk about it from a loading perspective, a welfare perspective and so on and we need to make good and deliberate decisions on that. It’s going to be a great opportunity for us to see our first year professionals get experience, travel with us, playing with us.

I think we really need to grab that opportunity as well to invest time in these players in combination with, of course we need to have a strong team there going out and showcase Arsenal to fans in another continent and the way we want to play football. So it’s really about finding that balance to do that and, I mean, high hopes that we are able to do that.”

However, there have been concerns raised about Arsenal’s decision to play this match, primarily surrounding player welfare in what is becoming an increasingly heavy schedule. Eidevall addressed these concerns, commenting, “The reason why we are having activity in this period of the year is because of the calendar. Because we play our last competitive game the 17th of May and the normal thing for us would have been to go on holiday after that, because our competitive season is done. 

But then there is an international period of fixtures, and I think that starts the 27th of May, where they are playing competitive games so it was a clear wish from both the players and the association teams to say that can we not go on holiday in that period to help the players prepare for those international fixtures. 

So that was the first decision for us to make, to say we’re not going to go on holiday and after that, of course different opportunities come up during that period. But this was never a case of where the players could be off because of international fixtures coming up. If there wouldn’t have been international fixtures coming here, I think the decision might’ve been very different in order to be like where do we plan our training and matches and so on.“

The Gunners boss also recognises the issues that the densely scheduled calendar may impose on his players, with those heading to national team camps in July.

“Then you see from a calendar perspective that they play during the end of May, beginning of June. Now after that we won’t have any training sessions but what the national team players are, they have another camp here now at the beginning of July, second week of July. We won’t have any training here, because at some point we need to give the players time off, but they need to be prepped to play qualifiers again during July and now that comes into the association and that’s a very very complicated situation. 

Then when you start looking from the players perspective, of course that’s when are they going to have time off and they definitely need to raise that with all the relevant stakeholders. I don’t think that’s right. I don’t think the summer is rightly planned from the players perspective in order to be able for them to switch off and get time off for it. But the reason why we are having activity after our last game of the season is because of the calendar and because of the request from the players and the associations to be able to train and to prepare for that international period coming up.”

Arsenal Women will head down under in the latter stages of May, as the Gunners are set to face the A-League All Stars on May 24th in Melbourne, Australia.